The present invention generally relates to a media-integrating system including a service in which information providing media such as broadcasting, telecommunication, and electronic publishing are integrated, an information providing method of realizing that service, and a terminal device for realizing that service.
Recently, in the electronic publishing industry, URL (Universal Resource Locator) that indicates locations of Internet information is recorded on a CD-ROM and the recorded URL is displayed as a link on a user terminal upon reproduction of the CD-ROM, thereby allowing the user to access desired information on the network simply by selecting the link.
In addition, a service is in practice in which data described in HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is transmitted by broadcasting to be displayed on terminal devices on which users select displayed links to access desired information on the network.
However, a combination of conventional electronic publishing (namely, a package), typically a CD-ROM, and telecommunication (namely, a network), typically the Internet, poses a problem that information cannot be obtained unless users go to search for desired information.
In a combination of broadcasting and network, information providers actively provide information to users rather than making them search for information, but there is a problem that broadcasting is incapable of sending large amounts of data. If large amounts of data are sent by consuming time, each receiving terminal requires a storage device large enough for storing the received data.
As is evident from the description so far, it is difficult for only these combinations of package and network and broadcasting and network to provide services satisfactory enough for users.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a media-integrating system capable of actively providing information to users by a combination of three entities; broadcasting, network, and package.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a media-integrating system capable of providing new services making the most of mass storage inherent to package and up-to-dateness inherent to network.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a medium for storing or distributing a data structure for implementing services according to the present invention and the data about this structure.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a terminal device capable of receiving the services provided according to the present invention.
The basic concept of the present invention is that information distributed by broadcasting, communication network, and package can be obtained by use of link information.
Therefore, a media-integrating system according to the present invention comprises a terminal device capable of receiving first information from a first medium, second information from a second medium, and third information from a third medium and a means for adding first link information to the above-mentioned first information to provide link with the above-mentioned second information and third information.
In the present invention, first, data to be used is constituted by the following information combination:
(1) filter information for selecting information;
(2) synchronization information for displaying information in synchronization with a television program;
(3) broadcast link information associated with a related television program;
(4) package information for acquiring data from a package;
(5) network information for acquiring data from a network;
(6) access control information for receiving particular information; and
(7) other information.
It should be noted that the broadcast link information, the package information, and the network information are adapted to contain an access key associated with access control and encryption information associated with encryption. Also, the package information is adapted to include package identification information for identifying a particular package. The network information is also adapted to include user information that allows access to an information providing device connected by an access-limited server or network.
It should also be noted that the data to be used in the present invention may have a ciphertext block in which encrypted data is stored and a plaintext block for use when ciphertext cannot be decoded.
The terminal device practiced as one preferred embodiment of the present invention comprises:
(1) a data broadcast receiving block for receiving data from data broadcasting;
(2) a package data acquiring block for acquiring data from a package;
(3) a network data acquiring block for acquiring data from a server;
(4) a broadcasting link processing block for switching between television programs;
(5) a display block for display data;
(6) an access control block for controlling an access key;
(7) a filtering block for selecting data; and
(8) a ciphertext processing block for processing hypertext.
The terminal device acquires the above-mentioned data from any of the data broadcasting receiving block, the package data acquiring block, and the network data acquiring block. The acquired data is passed to the filtering block that selects only particular data by use of the access key controlled by the access control block and the filter information of the acquired data. The data selected by the filtering block is displayed on the screen of the display block. At this moment, the broadcast link information, the package information, and network information included in this data are displayed as links. When the user selects one of the links, desired data is acquired through a corresponding means. If an access key is included in the acquired data, the package data acquiring block, the network data acquiring block, and the broadcast link processing block add the access key to the access control block. This constitution allows acquisition of only particular data when particular data is acquired.
It should be noted that the display block is also adapted to display in one screen the data acquired by the data broadcast receiving block, the package data acquiring block, and the network data acquiring block.
Further, if data to be acquired is encrypted, the ciphertext processing block decodes a ciphertext block if encryption information is given; if not, the ciphertext processing block uses a plaintext block.
If user information is included in the network information, the network data acquiring block sends the user information to the information providing device connected by server or network at requesting the information providing device for data, so that the information can be read from the information providing device connected by access-limited server or network only when a particular link is followed.
Thus, the technical concept of the present invention has been fully described to be understood by those skilled in the art. However, the present invention is not by any manner limited to the description made above but is solely determined by the appended claims.